It never ceases to amaze me how a few hours of time can turn a factory turd into a legitimate piece of off road equipment. A friend of mine is just getting into trail riding and I helped him pick out a clean '03 XR250R. It looked bone stock and appeared to have very little time on it so we grabbed it up. Even though it seemed a little weak on the test ride and was hard to start, it had great bottom end and a little reading convinced me that the suspension was in a different league than a lot of 225-250 class trail bikes, a good combination for a fresh trail rider. After a little more reading, I discovered that the hard starting seemed to be another factory fumble, easily fixed by the recommended uncorking mods.
While waiting on the air filter and jets to arrive, I had time to pull the powdered factory filter and snorkel as well as address the crazy ass welds that the factory leaves in the headers.
And the exhaust baffle is laughable so it had to go. Why do factories do this to bikes that aren't even marketed as street bikes? Yes it's nice to have a spark control device but there was no way in hell the "removable" baffle was coming out without cutting the spark screen off and knocking it out with a hammer.
After installing the UNI filter, new jets, removing the snorkel, grinding the header welds and pulling the baffle, the bike has gone from a nearly silent granny class bike, albeit a tall granny, to a very capable trail machine with a much better sound, for what that's worth. What a difference a few hours can make. I highly recommend doing these mods or having your local mechanic do them for you. This applies to many street bikes as well. The factory almost always leaves a little performance somewhere for the customer to tap into.
While waiting on the air filter and jets to arrive, I had time to pull the powdered factory filter and snorkel as well as address the crazy ass welds that the factory leaves in the headers.
And the exhaust baffle is laughable so it had to go. Why do factories do this to bikes that aren't even marketed as street bikes? Yes it's nice to have a spark control device but there was no way in hell the "removable" baffle was coming out without cutting the spark screen off and knocking it out with a hammer.
After installing the UNI filter, new jets, removing the snorkel, grinding the header welds and pulling the baffle, the bike has gone from a nearly silent granny class bike, albeit a tall granny, to a very capable trail machine with a much better sound, for what that's worth. What a difference a few hours can make. I highly recommend doing these mods or having your local mechanic do them for you. This applies to many street bikes as well. The factory almost always leaves a little performance somewhere for the customer to tap into.